We're educating the teachers on how to help our kids!!

Hi,
I am the mother of five children, four of whom are dyslexic. My husband is dyslexic as well. Over the the past ten years we have muddled our way through several schools and we even homeschooled for several years. After putting our children back into school (they are all doing well:) I decided that it just isn't acceptable to me that so many teachers (and parents) have so little knowledge on how my children need to be taught in a classroom. My husband and five kids and myself decided to write down all the frustrations, and helpful things that have occured as we took our children through school. It's a real eye opener. We have passed the book throughout our children's school. The results have been very good. I even had one teacher who has my nondyslexic child tell me that he felt horrible that he let many children in the past slip by because he just had not understood. Almost all the teachers stated they had no training in school on how to help children like mine and were grateful for any insight. I am hoping to someday educate all educators to understanding my children. If you would like to read our book for free, I would love comments. I feel there are a lot of parents, who like myself, could also use a little heads up when it comes to dyslexia.
Check out my web site at http://geocities.com/mmmasko/nochild.html
Thanks

Just want to say that my child is now in a school with a wonderful teacher and administration. He is finally getting help. We had to leave the previous school system to find a better way.

I haven't read all of your story yet, but I sure identify. It used to make me really angry when, at his old school, no help was offered. None was given when it was directly asked for. In fact, the teachers refused simple accommodations which would have made their own lives easier. They placed my child at the back of the classroom by the fifth week of the school year, where he could be ignored. More on that story in my post about the Classroom Environment.

The full-time resource teacher at the school said she was only there to help coded children. She also said that the school only assessed two children per year. So, a full-time job for only 12 children, and no help for any of the hundreds of others who needed it.

Why?

I sensed that the teaching staff and administration at his old school really didn't care. They could go off on their holidays to Cuba and Jamaica at spring break, and they could just dump the problem onto the next year's teacher.

One teacher was not qualified for primary school teaching, but was taken on due to a teacher shortage. (We live in an area of rapid growth, and most employers have staffing shortages.) She was my child's teacher. She told parents not to talk to her or leave voice messages by phone. She would correspond only by means of the student agenda. She also refused to grant extra time at parent-teacher interviews to those who requested it in advance, and would not make appointments outside of routine parent-teacher interviews. Teachers are well-paid here, and I wonder if the attraction of very nice wages and holidays works to the detriment of the students.

Then there are the parents, who have no escape. They live with the problem every year, day in and day out. Not to mention how the child must feel!

It seemed downright callous to me. I guess it's better that I found out after three years in that system that my child would get no help, rather than finding out later. Yes, the school resource teacher actually said, "Oh, he's not going to get any help next year. He has gotten all the help he's going to get." Which was what, exactly?